Thursday, April 15, 2010

"Ah! O'Foolinaroundagin, Sorry to Have...

...bumped into you again", I offered as we once again ran into each other in our highly cubicled office.
Luckily, neither of us were porataging cups of Joe back to our respective workplaces or apologies would have been replaced with finely-etched Croatian curse-verse as we dabbed hot coffee from out shirt and pants.

Not that that had not happened at some previous encounter with my workmates. Like the cornfields outside our office, one can tilt one's head upwards and see the distant surrounding walls of our corporate existence. But, hold one's head level, and all one sees is the color palates of Grey Executive or Brown Ennui of the 6 foot cubicles. Deceivingly open space. For the cluster of us who are on the left side of the Bell distribution and thus below the 6 ft height, accidents of the body-crashing variety do happen. Our shoes shush on the wall-to-wall, emitting low humming sounds which aren't loud enough to warn others of our onrushing presence.

I thought there had to be a solution to this problem aside from bringing in the chainsaw and cutting the cubicle walls down by a good foot or two. Watching "Ran" the other night, the solution stampeded over me like the Japanese cavalries and foot-soldiers in the movie.Flags!
Simply attach a flag to one's back. Different colors for different departments; why even different shades for people in each department. Tasteful personalization would be allowed as well; NASCAR fans, Iggles fans, Philly fans, all could have small insignias sewed into their personal flag. As we left our offices and our cubicles, a slipstream of air would follow our movements and a simple level-headed peak would allow us and our office-mates to detect each other over the precipices of our cubicles.
Bosses would love this flag thing. They'd simply peak out of their offices, see a collection of flags in one corner, and be able to leap into action! No more employees hiding behind the walls of the cubicles, like maze rats seeking out their cheese.
Employees would appreciate the warning that their bosses would telegraph to them as they marched, flag flying, from their office out to the Sargasso cubicles.

And I? Well, my laundry bill would be substantially reduced from the dropoff of coffee-mug collisions.

i like it...but, I think maybe if you made them drink a whole pot/urn of coffee they feel more punishment. Both in the social and cardiovascular sense. Imagine feeling like you may have a heart attack and no one will assist you as they could smell your breeeattth from 3 cubes away.